Elections Prove Wisconsin More Politically Divided
Monday, December 29th, 2014 -- 9:17 AM
(Milwaukee Journal) -At first glance, Gov. Scott Walker's re-election last month looks like a carbon copy of his victory four years earlier.He won the same kinds of voters. He won the same parts of the state. And he won with virtually the same share of the vote: 52.25% in 2010 and 52.26% in 2014. But on closer inspection, there is an important difference: Wisconsin is even more polarized today than it was four years ago.
Based on almost everything we know about the Nov. 4 election, the state's fault lines are deeper and more sharply defined, its voters are more divided along party lines and its communities are more politically one-sided. The Journal Sentinel explored these trends eight months ago in "Dividing Lines," a series of reports exploring the bitter political polarization across Wisconsin and its most divided place, metropolitan Milwaukee. Democrats and Republicans don't just have different views; they live in separate worlds.
Democratic and Republican partisanship has hardened. Compared to both the 2010 mid-term and the 2012 recall, voters in 2014 were more likely to vote for their own party's candidate and less likely to cross over and vote for the other party's candidate. Red counties got redder, blue counties got bluer. Of the 59 counties won by Walker in 2010, a majority (36) became more Republican in 2014. And of the 13 counties Walker lost in 2010, most (10) became more Democratic in 2014. Neighborhoods and communities became more politically "like-minded." The share of voters who live in politically one-sided places has been growing steadily.
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